


Elephants On Parade

by a_xmasmurder



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Q and his body do not get along, Q's head hates him, TW: Migraines, TW: Pain, migraines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_xmasmurder/pseuds/a_xmasmurder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Otherwise known as "Q Forgot His Migraine Medication"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elephants On Parade

**Author's Note:**

> Migraines are triggered differently, and they are suffered differently by different people. This is my (personal) experience with migraines. Individual experiences may be different than what is on the packaging.

Q stared at the blinking cursor on the black screen and cocked his head. There was something he was going to do with this, he was sure of it. His head rocked in the other direction, and he blinked at the screen.

“I’m sure I was going to do something. What was I going to type?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and reopened them slowly. The cursor still blinked at him, a single white vertical line on a black background. He tapped his fingers on the keys of his wireless keyboard impatiently. Damn it, he just knew there was something he was going to do, but his mind felt like it was in a traffic jam. There wasn’t much room for confusion in the mass of calculations and weight ratios and programming bits and bobbles and design schematics and the new scheduling system that he absolutely hated but was going to have to use anyway because every department was switching over on Tuesday, and today was Monday, and wasn’t he supposed to be typing something? His hands paused in their twitching and tapping, and he turned his head to the right. His neck felt tight as a bowstring, all the muscles bunching up in his shoulders and neck. He rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen up. Why was he tense? He was tense. It wasn’t because there was a mission on. There wasn’t any important life-or-death assignments on at the moment. That could change. Oh, that could change in a heartbeat, and he’d have to send another 00 drone to take out the threat before the world collapsed beneath them. Or it could be a cyberattack, and he’d be on his own against the unseen opponent because he’d sent ninety percent of his staff home an hour ago because it was slow and because of the budget concerns. Stupid bloody budget concerns. Ugh. He didn’t want to think about the budget committee right now. He had a programme to write.

He closed his eyes again, and lay his fingertips - cold fingers - on the keys. Programmes. He had programmes to write. But. He opened his eyes again and groaned. “What the hell am I supposed to be doing?”

Elton John wafted up from his iPod, which was charging on the little pad he’d designed a couple years ago. He’d slapped a new patent on it, and now he was making some royalties off of the sales. God, he loved designing things. But he was in the process of making a better one, one that could charge faster and charge bigger things, up to and including a rail gun. The thought of wrapping a rail gun in a giant charging blanket made him smile. Well, rail guns in general made him smile. He loved the technology that he got to play with here in Q Branch. Much better than Tech Support. He loved it here, even if he didn’t love being the first scapegoat in case something went wrong in the field. He rolled his head on his neck again, wincing at the tightness. God, he wasn’t that tense just a few minutes ago, was he? He was tensing up. Why? Why should he be tense? He narrowed his eyes at the screen. Maybe something was about to happen. That had to be it. Something bad was about to happen. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but something horrid was about to happen, and he wouldn’t be able to stop it. He leaned back and took a deep breath, then stood up and stretched his arms above his head, trying to pull his muscles back into alignment.

“Do you have anything you need testing?”

Q turned a bit too quickly, and the traffic jam in his head slid around on suddenly icy roads. He squinted at the troublesome duo of James Bond and Eve Moneypenny. “No?” And he didn’t, actually, nothing that wasn’t either already at R and D or much too dangerous to let a 00 and a former field agent-turned-secretary of death by paperwork get their hands on. Well, there was that composite crossbow/shotgun combo, but Lord help him, he wanted the first crack at that baby. A muscle ticked in his temple, and he pressed cold, cold fingers to it, rubbing the twinge away. “I haven’t got anything on the table right now, Bond, please don’t touch that it’s corrosive and I’d hate for you to ruin your beautiful complexion when it blows up in your face.”

Eve snorted as James set down the grenade prototype very slowly and gingerly, backing away from it with hands held up around his shoulders. “Thanks for the warning, Quartermaster.” She clicked forward on lethally tall cherry red stiletto heels and handed him another sheaf of white paper. “Nothing important for you to sign, though I know just how much you adore paperwork, dear.”

Q grimaced. “The world’s scourge, paperwork is. To the rubbish bin with all of it. Stop killing the trees that we depend on to breathe, and switch everything to electronics. We will be just fine.” He took the paper stack and dropped it onto a clear spot of his desk with a resounding thud that sounded so bloody loud to his ears that he wanted to clap his hands over them. “Ugh. I must be coming down with something...Bond, I wouldn’t touch that either, it bites.”

Bond turned from a black box. “Bites?”

Q smirked, though the motion of his lips pulled at the skin on his face strangely, and it didn’t feel good. “Electrified outer shell. It feels like static shock. But if you were to ignore it and try to pry it open, then it’s programmed to deliver a lethal dose of electricity. A five digit code turns off the countermeasure.” His stomach turned a bit sour, and Q swallowed. “Definitely coming down with something,” he muttered bitterly. Of course, he’d be coming down with something now, in the middle of an important programming session. He sat back down and went back to blinking at his computer screen, the command prompter open and blinking back at him. “I’m supposed to be doing something. What am I supposed to be programming, Miss Moneypenny?”

Eve leaned one hip against the side of his desk in her typical ‘I’m relaxed even though I have a billion and one things to do and I don’t have time to do them all by five’ position. “You were working on the Optimus programme, I know that.”

Q blinked. “Optimus? I...oh. Yes, yes!” He closed the empty screen and opened the already half-finished document. “Optimus, yes, I have to work on that.”

“Is it something I can test?” Bond had something silver and sharp in his hands, and he was flicking it open and closed idly. Q cocked his head and winced.

“Damn it, my neck feels like a bloody steel trap, it’s so tight. And what do you have? And no, Optimus is not something you want to test, Bond, it’s a Skynet thing.”

“Skynet?” Bond flicked the metal thing closed, and the little ‘snnkt’ bounced around in Q’s skull, ricocheting off of the stalled thoughts in the traffic jam. Q was pretty sure car alarms were going off in his head right now, because everything felt so stuffy and ugh and blergh. He rubbed his hand absently on his stomach, worrying about how his fingers were tingling. Bond smirked at him. “I think I saw this movie.”

“Not that sort of Skynet. It’s a communications thing.” Q stood up, a bit too quickly because everything sort of slid to the left, and now his right eye was ticking. And then everything clicked into place in his memory, and he cursed. Loudly. Bond flicked the knife closed and wrapped his large hand around it, going still and silent, waiting for an opponent in that overtrained way of his. Eve straightened, her foot going back down, her shoe making a soft-but-loud click on the concrete.  

“Something wrong?” Bond sounded calm. And he probably was. But his stillness did not go unnoticed. Q himself had frozen, mentally cursing his dumb fucking luck that he had to be at work for what was about to happen. And it was going to be bad, ugly bad. Because right after the tic starts, the aura would show up...and there it was. Around the lights, around the computer screen, around Bond and Eve, a smudgy brushstroke of muted colour and bright pinpricks started to form, and it stabbed him in the eyes. He closed them, trying to ignore the tightness of his skin and his neck and shoulders and hell, even his knees hurt now. All of his joints were aching. Nerves. Nerve pain. And it wouldn’t get better. It was about to get much, much worse. He clenched his fists and flinched when a soft hand settled on his shoulder joint.

“Q?” Eve asked, and her voice was much too loud right now. Much, much too loud, everything was much too loud and much too bright and -

“Oh, god, turn it off. Turn off the lights. Please, this is not - turn it off. Ow, please turn it off.” Even his own voice was painful. The traffic jam in his brain was moving again, but now the cars were trains, freight trains and passenger trains and high speed express trains and they were all on the same tracks and barely sliding past each other, roaring down the tracks at speed. He could feel the pressure of their passing. And he knew that it was only a matter of time before one would miss the switch and hit another, which would hit another and another and another and then it would be just one fucking big horrid fireball because one of them will most likely be carrying some sort of bomb and it would go off in his head and he’d be utterly destroyed and - “Please, just turn off the lights, and the sound, everyone shut up please don’t talk I don’t want to talk right now just turn it off.” He leaned against his desk and slid to his knees next to his messenger bag, digging frantically for - “Oh god. Oh god, no I forgot them.” His bottle of Imitrex was not in his bag. “Oh god.”

Bond was at his side, and he pressed a warm hand against Q’s back. Fire lit across Q’s skin, and he jumped away, bumping into his chair, which sent more fire racing over his oversensitive skin. “Fuck, don’t! Don’t touch me!” He blinked in the harsh lights, and saw the worried moue on Bond’s face. Then the lights dimmed, one strip light after another, until the whole of the abandoned train station was bathed in darkness. There was still the lights from the monitors, and the emergency lighting along the floor, but it was enough for now. Q quivered and breathed, and Bond stayed in his position, crouched on the floor like a great gargoyle.

“Tell me what you want me to do. I won’t touch you, just tell me what you want me to do.” His voice was dialed down to a rumbling whisper, soft and quiet and comforting. Q calmed down, or at least tried to, and started to think logically as long as he could. “Medical would have Imitrex. I need Imitrex. It’s a triptan, I need it. I’m about to have a really wicked migraine, and I need to head it off. It’s probably already too late for it, but I need it. Please get me some.”

Bond nodded in the darkness, and he was gone, pushing out of the doors at a run. Eve was next to kneel down, but she didn’t look like a gargoyle, she looked like an angel. Q whimpered. “Eve, I need cold water. I need to get to the restroom, or get a bucket of cold water - “

And then the trainwreck happened. A burst of light behind his eyes barely warned him, and then he balled himself underneath his desk and hid his head as the pain blindsided him.

Eve’s phone trilled, and Q hissed at her, flapping a tingling hand in her direction. In a second, she had the mobile in her hand and silenced. The light bathing her face either terrified Q or calmed him, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He couldn’t think, he was sick, and he didn’t want to move.

“Q, darling? James has the medicine, he’s on his way back. He also got a heating blanket and an ice pack from the nurse. She said it might help.” Eve shifted and sat down, A-line skirt that cost more than Q’s entire wardrobe scraping across the dirty concrete. “Can you tell me if you are okay?”

“Pretty fuckin’ far from okay.” Q swallowed against a surge of nausea. “Gonna be sick. Need something to be sick in.”

“I’m not leaving your side until James gets back, alright, love?”

Q’s stomach flipped, and he fought the gag, which only made another train crash in his head. “...fuckingfuck...pills are out…” He shook in his little ball and groaned. His skin was crawling and on fire and everything was cold and hot and so painful and he didn’t want to be alive right now. He needed some really hardcore medication right now, or a really good alcohol, one that would knock him out. But it’s too bad that alcohol triggered migraines for him. Maybe he would just drink and then his head would reach critical mass and then it would explode and he wouldn’t have to deal with this hell anymore…

“John’s a mack truck, quill.”

Q winced. “...what…”

“Ham is back quick.” A gentle hand landed on his shoulder, and it felt like sandpaper. He flinched from it, and the sandpaper continued scratching him. Maybe his clothes were made of sandpaper, or maybe they were on fire. He might be on fire, and he wasn’t making much sense. At least, the words weren’t making sense.

“Can he think with numbers, evil?”

“He’s a sink.”

Q tried to shake his head to keep the trains on track and the words from wrapping around themselves in a jumble of letters and blinking cursors, but the pain only got worse. “...oh god help me…” He stuck out an arm and whinged. “No one is making sense, and there are trains and elephants and explosions in my head and words are broken, please make sense.”

A shuffle sounded like a thousand klaxons to him, but the warm knee next to his back - not touching him, thank fucking GOD - felt so good. He wanted to curl around it, but he couldn’t, not yet. Not until things started making sense again. “Quarterhorse?”

“....quartermaster, I’m the fucking quartermaster, not an equine…”

“Jason, he’s mired into the void, there is sand in his face.”

“...oh my god, fucking shut up you aren’t making sense…”

There was tapping next to his head, tapping on the concrete, and it was coming in patterns. Patterns! He could do patterns, patterns kept the trains from derailing, and he could interpret words from patterns. Morse code. Someone knew morse code. Oh, thank heavens, he can do this. He tried to focus on the tapping, and the small part of his brain that had been spared from the nuclear disaster that was his migraine morphed the tapping into letters, which became words that didn’t break in half and become different words between his ears and his brain. His stomach lurched again, and he growled and swallowed. “Yes. Yes, I need whatever you have.” He flopped the arm he’d stretched out, thankful that James had brought an injectable form of sumatriptan so he wouldn’t have to try swallowing and possibly throwing up a pill. The downside is that James would have to touch him, and God, he didn’t want him to, but he’d have to deal with -

There was a light prick, and then fire on his arm. He wanted to pull away, but he couldn’t because someone was holding onto his wrist with an iron grip. He whinged and whimpered, but the grip didn’t let up until the prick was gone. Then, blessedly, the hand left his arm, and he pulled it in like an injured wing, cradling it against his shirt. The shirt that felt like it was burning him. “I need to get this off, please get it off me…”

The tapping came again, and he listened to it. “Yes, my shirt, please, it hurts.”

More tapping. A female voice declared that pears were rather slimy and smelled like dogs. “Pears are good fruit, shut up, you don’t know what you are saying...and yes, god, something soft would do.” And then a cold washcloth was pressed against his face and oh merciful GOD that felt good. Oh, wow. Much good. Very coldness. Many wetness. Wow. He could have purred if another train hadn’t derailed and hit the station in the middle of his head. “Oh GOD that hurt, please stop whatever you did that made that happen and don’t do it again.”

The light on his desk flicked off in an instant, and then there was warmth on him.

The electric blanket.

“Sorry, was jumping the bus with potable water.”

“...what?” Q curled up further, pressing the cool flannel against his face and snuggling under the heated blanket. “Stop trying to talk, it’s pointless, you aren’t making any sense.”

Then James tapped the floor again, insistent and demanding. Q breathed and understood. “...should be fine. Just leave me be for a few hours. Only disturb me if the world is ending in a spectacularly horrid fashion. I’m going to sleep, or at least try. Leave some ibuprofen by my hand, I’ll try to take it soon.”

He closed his eyes against the pain and tried to relax every muscle in his body, like his therapist had shown him to do while James slipped the blanket off of him and unbuttoned his shirt. Though it drove his skin insane and caused two more train derailments and somehow a fiery aeroplane crashed into the Thames in his head, he breathed through the removal of his shirt, and whimpered when a very soft cotton-y tee replaced it. Finally, he could relax enough to rest and put his body into sleep mode for a while until the migraine passed.

  
  
  
  


Bond and Eve stood at the doorway to the inner sanctum of Q Branch, arms crossed and legs spread, just waiting for someone to be foolhardy enough to go through them. Beyond them, waiting at the appropriate distance of thirty feet as dictated by a frightened and upset Eve, was the medical team that wanted to get their hands on the Quartermaster and take him to Medical. They were still trying to make their case in hushed tones, pleading with the two guards to let them look at the beleaguered man beyond. Bond sighed and shook his head at their efforts.

“Again, I’m going to tell you this. Hopefully, it will stick this time, because if I have to tell you again, it will be at gunpoint, understand?” Eve threw her slim hands onto her hips and nearly growled. “You want to move a man who is in pain from the most intense migraine I’ve ever witnessed into a heavily lit area with loud noises and beeping and nothing but cold stainless steel and scratchy bedclothes. I don’t know whether you people are actual medical professionals or just masochistic bastards that steal our blood for nefarious purposes. Again, my answer is over my dead body!” She threw the hardest stare she could in their direction, and as far as James could see, she still had it, because the medical team backed up a few more paces and twittered in their little group. James smirked, and rubbed Eve’s back.

“I’m sure he’s going to be fine, love.”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t making sense, and he couldn’t even stand being touched. Is that a thing with those sorts of headaches?”

“Sometimes. It’s just...overwhelming. Mentally, physically, and emotionally overwhelming. I do hope this isn’t a common thing, because if it is…”

“He wouldn’t be the Quartermaster if it were.” Eve stared down the hall as M walked through the double glass doors at the end. “And here comes the worst of the lot.”

James straightened and stared the man down. “Good evening, M.”

“Agent Bond. Miss Moneypenny.” M craned his head above James’ shoulder. “How’s he doing?”

“That wasn’t quite the question I was expecting, I have to be honest.” James grunted and shrugged. “I haven’t heard a gunshot, or wailing, so I’m hazarding a guess and saying he’s asleep.”

“That’s good.” M visibly relaxed. “My wife has occasional migraines, and when she gets one, she’s out of the game for a couple days. At least he’s resting.” He nodded at Eve. “I have some paperwork that you could sort for me, if you don’t mind.”

“Straight away, sir.” She shot a look at the medical team, and they cringed. She nodded at Bond. “If they move an inch, shoot to kill.”

“Immediately, ma’am.” James winked, and she sashayed away, the seat and hip of her expensive dress suit dusty and scraped. He and M watched her slide through the doors, and then M shook his head.

“She still has it.” He nodded to the doctors, and James smirked, shifting his jacket ever so slightly to garner better access to his sidearm, which made them cower back even further. M rolled his eyes. “And of course, you don’t even have to say anything at all, do you?”

“Not usually. But then, I tend to follow orders to the letter, even if I do go about them in an unconventional manner.” James turned slightly when a light flickered to life in the darkness of Q Branch. “He’s awake.”

M nodded at him, and Bond made his way through the bullpen, finally arriving to see the groggy form of Q crawl out from under the desk. “Good evening, Quartermaster.”

“Good, you’re not speaking gibberish. How long did I sleep?” Q pressed a shaky hand to his forehead and hissed.

“Six hours. Medical wants samples of your brain on pain to see if you are an android imitating the human condition known as a migraine to better integrate yourself with society.”

Q sat up and closed his eyes, smiling tiredly and weaving a bit. “Oh, lovely. Tell them that I have a failsafe built in that will blow up everything within one hundred kilometres of ground zero. No survivors. So they might want to think twice about dissecting me.” He blinked and turned away from his desk lamp. “You and Eve are angels, you know that? If I’d been alone and hit with that, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“You would have crawled to Medical and screamed at them that they weren’t making sense and would they just inject you with something already?” James lay a careful hand on Q’s forearm and was pleased when there wasn’t a twitch or a flinch.

“That’s true. I’m not entirely helpless. I just like to whinge and bitch and complain a lot.” Q yawned. “I need to go home. My head still aches, but the worst is over. But I’m going to have a hangover from this, if that makes any sense to you.”

James nodded. “Yes, yes it does. Your body has just been put through the ringer, and you are exhausted. Let’s get you back to your flat. You do have more medication at home, right?”

“Yeah. I was an idiot and forgot to put it in this morning.” Q shook his head. “Haven’t had one that bad in a couple years.”

“Might not happen again.” James helped Q to his feet, and Q moved forward to grab his bag. His balance was still of, and he tipped sideways into James’ waiting arms.

“Not likely, but this could be the start of a string of them. Normally, I have them under control, though. This one...surprised me.” Q pressed his hand to his belly. “Ow, stomach pain. Ow.”

James nodded again. “Right. Home, bed, and then I’ll wake you for some food. How does that sound?”

Q rested his aching head on James’ shoulder. “Yes. That sounds good. And tea, I need tea. Caffeine is not a trigger for me, and if I don’t get something in me soon, I will get a caffeine headache and just get horridly snappy and bitchy.”

“Good Lord, you and your head don’t get on very well, do you?”

“Not really.”

They reached the door, and the medical team pressed forward, ready to snatch Q from his grasp. James narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip. Q laughed quietly and stood up tall and proud. He held up a pale hand in greeting.

“Hello, Earthlings. I come from the ninth sacred planet of Umqra, which is twenty thousand light-years from your little planet. I’m afraid I’m not used to the high concentrations of oxygen in your atmosphere, and I have discovered that my species can indeed get what you Earthlings call ‘migraines’, which are rather horrid pains in the head, not unlike ones that our kind endure during the Sacred Ritual of Kumbaya that we perform every seventh passing of our fifth moon Chianti.” His voice was still quiet and pained, but at least he was getting back to normal. Beside him, James was nearly doubled over in laughter, M was shaking his head, and the medical team were staring blankly and worriedly at him. Someone near the back mentioned the Psych department, and Q decided he had overstayed his welcome on this planet.

“Alright, strong Earthman, take me to your place of residence so that we may rest the righteous rest of the weary.”

James choked down a bark of laughter. “Fucking hell, Q, you sound like a loon!”

“And rightly so. Let’s part ways with these maniacs who keep muttering something about Psych. What is that, one of your Earth gods?”

“Oh, my God, please shut up!” James bit his tongue. “Or I’m telling Eve all about this.”

“You started it, with their accusations of me being an android!”

They kept bickering down the hall, and M watched them go, happy that Q was going to be alright. Behind him, the medical team sent a representative to talk to him. M turned and glared at the much smaller man.

“Not. One. Word. The Quartermaster was just having a spot of fun. Now leave him be, is that understood?”

With a gulp, the man backed away, and the team slithered back to whatever dark hole they’d appeared from, and M smirked.

“I’ve still got it, too. Take that, showoffs.”

He folded his hands behind his back and retreated from Q Branch, leaving the door unlocked for the next crew to come in at around half four. Seeing as it was four already, then he figured it would be fine -

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he checked the mobile screen.

_**M- Lock that damned door, or I’ll take a stab at being M for a while as you sort out the absolute clusterfuck Q Branch would become if you leave that door open for the 00’s to find. - Q** _

“Oh, Jesus, I forgot about them.” He turned around and locked it quick, and then finally walked away, ready to go home and nurse another migraine victim to health again.

  
  



End file.
